


Across the Universe

by obwjam



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Borrowers - All Media Types
Genre: Borrowers - Freeform, G/T, GT, Gen, Giant/Tiny, I love my Guardians, Lots of fluff!!!, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 08:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15190373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obwjam/pseuds/obwjam
Summary: After your planet is destroyed by Thanos, you're left alone. Luckily, the Guardians of the Galaxy find you. (guardians of the galaxy x borrower!reader one-shot; listen to across the universe by the beatles either before or while you're reading it!!)





	Across the Universe

_Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup_

_They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe_

_Pools of sorrow, waves of joy_

_Are drifting through my open mind_

_Possessing and caressing me…_

Peter Quill looked fondly at the little form sitting on the table, head resting right next to one of his earphones. He could faintly hear the music floating up from his spot in the doorway. The Beatles. Classic.

You stared out the window, watching the stars streak past the window as quickly as they appeared. It never ceased to amaze you that those stars represented entire systems of planets; of life just like your own.

A life you almost didn’t have if it wasn’t for the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Your race were scavengers, taking from the giant inhabitants of the planet in order to survive. It was a grueling existence, but spending every day with your friends and family was something special—Racing with your friends to see who can collect the most food, showing your siblings the new treasures and trinkets you found before them, building things alongside your parents. You were a master of stealth and agility, everyone told you. The best scavenger they’ve seen in years.

But then Thanos invaded the planet. No, not for the scavengers, but for the giant inhabitants who were apparently suffering to live a balanced existence. Thanos had no idea of the presence of your race on the planet when he wreaked his havoc. And it killed almost everybody. Your parents crushed, your friends buried under mounds of rubble, your siblings being left behind as you sprinted away with fleeting breaths, just hoping to make it out alive.

When Thanos left, there were distinctly less giants around. It made scavenging a lot easier, but you were on your own for months, maybe. You didn’t know how long. You were taking your scavenged supplies back to an abandoned shack that was damaged beyond repair one day when you heard a loud whirring from above, sparking memories of that fateful day. You ran for cover, but a piece of flying debris hit you square on the back of the head, causing you to black out as you tumbled to the ground.

“Damn it!” Quill yelled, looking at the blackened landscape. Almost every structure had been reduced to rubble, and the air was silent.

“He’s already been here,” Gamora hissed.

“Alright! Well, let’s keep moving then,” Rocket muttered, making his way back to the ship.

“Wait!” Mantis said suddenly, pointing exactly to where you were lying unconscious on the ground. “What is  _that_?”

Quill took the first steps, following to where Mantis was pointing. “I don’t see anything.”

“She is on the ground,” Mantis said, squatting down, her finger still pointing at you. “Look.”

Quill took a knee, tapping his earpiece. His eyes widened as his mask folded back.

“What the hell…?”

He looked even closer and quietly gasped when he saw how  _human_  you looked, save for your slightly pointy ears. Except you were like no human or being Quill had ever seen; you were three inches tall. He noticed your chest was still expanding and retracting, but your eyes were closed.

“Aw, man…”

Gently, he cupped his hands and slipped his fingers under your limp body, slowly lifting you up as he stretched back to his full height. He ignored the clamoring from his group as he held you steady in his hands, making a beeline back to the ship. He didn’t know what you were, but he knew you had suffered from whatever Thanos did.

“HA HA!” Drax bellowed as soon as he saw what Quill was carrying. “Quill has acquired a pet!”

“Shut up, you idiot! She’s  _not_  a pet,” he insisted, laying you down gently on the table. “She’s hurt.”

“Clearly hurt from what  _he_  did,” Gamora spat, walking to the cockpit to get the ship stared.

“But she is so small! Surely her kind must be used to getting beat up all the time,” Drax went on. “It’s just nature.”

Quill had gotten good at tuning Drax’s comments out. He sat next to you, watching in fascination as your tiny strands of hair moved up and down to the beat of your breathing. He wanted to make sure he saw to it that you woke up.

It took hours, but you finally emerged from your unconscious state. The first thing you noticed was how dark it was, leading you to believe you had been out for several hours and night had fallen. But it only took a few seconds to realize that you weren’t on dirt anymore; no, you were on a solid surface. An oddly  _smooth_  surface. You looked around, but the items around you were indistinguishable. You rubbed your eyes.  _Where the hell were you?_

“I AM GROOT!”

You covered your ears at the ear-shattering noise. You turned around in horror at the shape of… a sentient tree…?

“I AM GROOT!” he yelled again, but you were too terrified to even question what that was supposed to mean. You started to run before another even louder voice rang out.

“Groot! No! Stop it! Stop that!”

You didn’t even have time to react as a giant pair of hands reached down, grabbing the tiny tree from the tabletop. Shrieking, you began to run even faster before your vision was filled with black spots. You collapsed, your head pounding.

“Ah! Are you alright bud?!”

You whipped your head around and felt your stomach sink through the floor. A giant face was staring right at you, eyes the color of the ocean wide in wonder. A light mustache rested at the top of his lips, with a faintly-trimmed beard sitting on the rest of his face. You felt your face get hot as you started to shake uncontrollably at the terrifying sight before you. Images of your planet being destroyed by Thanos flashed as you shut your eyes, as if the scenes were permanently pained on your eyelids. You simply had no energy to continue running as you broke down, sobbing into your tattered shirt.

Quill looked at the tiny being, heart tugging as he watched you break down.

“No-n-n-n-o! I-I’m not gonna hurt’cha!” he said, throwing his hands up in defense. Of course, you weren’t looking.

“This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening…” you repeated to yourself. Your shaky, stuffy voice just made you feel worse.

“My name’s Peter Quill,” he said softly, flinching at the sound of your sobs. “But everyone calls me Star-Lord.”

“No one calls him that,” Rocket quipped as he walked by, holding scrap metal in his hands.

“Dude!” Peter said, throwing his hands out. You picked the wrong moment to look back up at him; you cried out in fear when his hands moved.

“No-no-no! Hey hey hey,” he said, leaning in. “No, hey, you’re alright. Don’t worry. We’re the good guys.”

 _Good guys._  You looked up at him, not believing for a second that giants with advanced technology like this ship could ever be considered  _good_.

“N-n-no…” you tried. “You… you’re…”

_Huge. You’re huge._

“I’m here to help,” he said, more firmly this time. “We landed on your planet and you were unconscious on the ground. What happened?”

You sniffed, trying to sort through the whirlwind of thoughts swirling through your head like a hurricane. But only one word kept coming to mind.

“T…T-T-Thanos…”

Peter froze at your words, his expressing shifting from concern to anger. “What did that monster do to you?”

You were surprised to hear him refer to Thanos as a monster. You thought  _all_  giants were monsters.

“H-he…” but you couldn’t finish. You couldn’t dare speak out loud about what happened.

“Quill, stop pestering her with stupid questions,” Rocket said, climbing up to the seat next to Peter.

You looked up to the source of this unfamiliar voice, and somehow it was even scarier than what you were anticipating. He was a humanoid animal that you didn’t recognize.

“Oh, stop looking at me like that,” he said, waving his hand toward you in dismissal. “You don’t gotta be scared. Quill here couldn’t even hurt you if he tried. Can’t make any promises about the rest of us, though.”

“Rocket! Come on, man! Have some respect.”

“Is it awake?” Drax piped up from the other side of the room.

Rocket laughed. “Yeah, and she’s totally  _terrified!”_

Peter flashed you an apologetic look as another giant entered your view. His skin was a pale grey with strange red markings all over.

“Wow,” he breathed, leaning in far too close. “She is so tiny and helpless!”

“Alright, that’s enough from you,” Peter pushed Drax back, hands twitching as he put them back to his lap. He wanted to scoop you back up and protect you from his group of morons, but he knew that would only freak you out more.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Quill asked Mantis, who was observing from across the room. She merely shook her head.

Peter took a few more breaths before speaking to you. “What’s your name, little guy?”

You craned your neck up, wiping the tears from your eyes. There was something… comforting about his voice. At first, you couldn’t bring yourself to say anything.  _His eyes are the size of my head_. But looking at his soft expression, you began to think that if he was going to hurt you, he would have done it already. And he didn’t look like he was going to settle for silence.

“(Y/n),” you muttered so quietly, you weren’t sure if he heard you.

Quill’s face lit up when he finally had a name to work with. “(Y/n). You mentioned Thanos before. When was he here?”

You shuddered. “I-I don’t know. Months, maybe.”

“Months?!” he repeated back to you in disbelief. “Your planet was totally trashed!”

You snorted. “Surely I can’t be to blame for that.”

You explained to him the nature of your very existence; how you merely took from the real inhabitants of the planet and stayed hidden to keep safe. You told him how the planet hadn’t really recovered from Thanos’s tirade months earlier and that many parts were simply left abandoned out of respect for those who died there. When he asked you how you could have possibly stayed alive, you went on to tell him how you’ve been doing just that for the past (y/a) years.

“You know, I grew up a scavenger,” Quill said, almost immediately after you had finished talking. You perked up when he said that, shifting your legs so they were now crisscrossed.  _How could he be a scavenger when he’s so big?_

He laughed lightly at your sudden liveliness. “We called ourselves Ravagers. Had to be real good at thievin’.” He tapped his chest. “You’re looking at the best Ravager to ever live.”

“Oh my god,” Rocket muttered in disgust from the floor.

You smiled. “Doesn’t sound like we’re too different.”

Quill told you about the members of his team—they called themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy—and how, when they’re not saving the world, they were after Thanos themselves. Listening to their heroics was inspiring—they weren’t like you, cowering on the ground and hiding. They were in the thick of the fight, making a real difference. Maybe if you had their mindset the day Thanos attacked, your friends and family might not have died.

You and Peter talked for hours that night. He brought you into his quarters to sleep, but you just couldn’t stop comparing a lifetime’s worth of stories about scavenging and ravaging.

“Yeah, well, there was this one time I held an Infinity Stone in my hand,” he bragged. “It was super crazy, but, you know, those things are like, super powerful and I just held one like it was nothing.”

“There was this time I had to sneak past  _five giants_  to get fruit for the evening. My brother dared me and I snuck past all five of them and carried back three grapes like it was nothing. He was  _so_ mad that I beat his record of two grapes!”

“We took down an inter-dimensional monster once to save batteries for some golden douchebags.” You looked at him, wide-eyed. “But then Rocket stole from them and they were after us for like, weeks. And then I had to kill my dad.”

You shifted from his hand onto his chest as you shared stories, finding the rhythmic beat of his heart to be soothing. He had flicked on music, and you were absolutely awestruck at the upbeat yet relaxing tunes he had. He went through both of his tapes, explaining to you what each song meant and which one was his favorite, smiling as he felt the gentle taps from your foot on his chest. He pulled out his Zune to show you, but you much preferred the sound coming from the stereo system.

You fell asleep on his stomach that night, exhausting overtaking both of you like a sudden storm. You got to know the rest of the Guardians better, even if it took a little while for you to get used to everything. You had nights where you broke down, and a Guardian would go and comfort you depending on what you were thinking about that day—your family, your friends, Thanos, feelings of insignificance. But you worked past it, even getting so comfortable as to spend some time with Rocket building a tiny gun and a mini version of Star-Lord’s rocket shoes for you to wear. Even though he called you pipsqueak instead of your real name, he admired your handiwork and your mechanical skills. 

“No, you have to hook up the wires to the secondary system and reroute the power through the auxiliary cable to get the right thrust without it overloading.”

“That’s ridiculous!” he would shout back. “You can’t just bypass the main system without— _oh.”_ While he was definitely more adept with bigger pieces of tech, you knew you had the upper hand when it came to small mechanics.

You loved leaving the ship and exploring planets with them, happily situated in Quill’s front pocket as you excitedly pointed out new things you’d never seen before. He was certainly a talker, and he reveled in being able to talk your ear off about everything without you getting annoyed. He found out quickly that you, too, were a talker. And when you went onto different worlds, you were  _bold_. You would jump off Quill’s hand without warning and help sneak into places and disable alarms and hotwire systems undetected. You even disarmed a bomb on a mission.

Your favorite part, though, was looking out the ship window. Everything was small compared to the vastness of space. It made you feel better that the stars you saw, while gigantic, were nothing more than dots that speckled the black in your view.

_Images of broken light_

_Which dance before me like a million eyes_

_They call me on and on_

_Across the universe_

_“Nothing’s gonna change my world…”_  you hummed mindlessly, not realizing Peter was standing in the doorway.

Quill smiled when he heard your tiny voice float up from the table; hearing you adapt to Earth music and sing along was a huge change from the cowering tiny you were when he first found you. He thought his life had been hard... you had to steal essentials  _every day_  just to get by. He really admired that.

_“Nothing’s gonna change my world…”_

Though you had only been around for a few weeks, Quill had felt a bond with you he didn’t quite get with any of the other Guardians. You were the closest thing he had to a human, even if you could fit in the palm of his hand.

_“Nothing’s gonna change my world…”_

You looked up, cheeks red as you watched Peter walk over to the table and take a seat next to you. At first, you were embarrassed that he had heard you singing; but listening to him softly lull the next line made you feel at peace.

_“Nothing’s gonna change my world…_

_Thoughts meander like a restless wind_

_Inside a letter box_

_They tumble blindly as they make their way_

_Across the universe…”_

You had the goofiest grin on your face, realizing that the two of you had just sung in unison like you’ve been doing it all your life.

“Good stuff, right?” he said, carefully lifting the headphones off the table and shoving his Zune back into his pocket.

You nodded. “I can’t believe we get to do this.” You turned up to him. “Go through space, help people who can’t save themselves.” Your thoughts drifted to your family and friends.

“What happened on your planet with Thanos isn’t your fault,” he said, gently stroking your back with his index finger. “He’s unstoppable.”

You wanted to argue, but you knew he was right.

“Yeah, but Thanos hasn’t met  _Star-Lord_ yet,” you joked, a wide grin plastered on your face.

Peter chuckled. “Technically, he hasn’t met  _you_  yet either, (Y/n/n),” he replied, lightly poking you.

You laughed. “Star-Lord and (Y/n/n). He’d never even see it coming.”

The two of you stared out the window, eyes fixated on the colorful space cloud that was now in view.

 _Star-Lord and (Y/n/n),_ Peter thought, looking down at you. He loved the way you used his fingers as a backrest.  _I can get used to that._

 

**Author's Note:**

> if you want me to write more of this, let me know! i was thinking about just writing some fun one-shot stories with you and the guardians, but i will take suggestions! :)


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